Passenger Flow Simulation for Railway Stations at Sochi 2014 Olympics

The Adler – Alpika-Service railway is one of the major infrastructural projects of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia. Athletes and visitors will use this railway to get to the mountain stadiums and ice palaces. The estimated traffic handling capacity of the railway is a maximum of 8,500 passengers per hour. The intervals between trains are projected to be 6-8 minutes.

NIIAS is a scientific institution that specializes in railway traffic and infrastructure management. This organization has been operating for more than 50 years in the field of railroad automation and modern IT technique implementation. NIIAS was assigned to design the stations for the Adler – Alpika-Service railway.

As a part of the traffic organization project, five railroad station models were simulated with AnyLogic software. AnyLogic’s pedestrian modeling library helped to determine the shortest possible intervals between trains and to find solutions for desired station traffic handling capacity. The modeling results also showed that ticket barriers should be installed after the Olympics so as to not slow down the expected high pedestrian traffic.

In order to reach maximum realism in the passenger traffic simulation, an Agent Based modeling method was used. It is the only simulation modeling method which takes into account individual passenger behavior. Discrete Event modeling was also used in this project to simulate train movement. NIIAS specialists noted that AnyLogic’s advantages included the support of all simulation methods and the existence of a comprehensive library for pedestrian and train traffic modeling.

Using these simulation results, NIIAS specialists continue to work on the project, while taking into consideration the newly discovered factors and limitations. NIIAS specialist Alexander Ignatenkov stated that simulation modeling is almost always used in new railroad/station planning. It was used to calculate passenger notification time at the station before high-speed train arrival and to simulate train traffic at the bridge of the projected high-speed railway Moscow-Smolenskaya – Usovo.

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